


After

by Chiomi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1676330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn’t forget she was dead, but it started to seem unimportant after a while. The weather was kind, the sun never too hot nor the nights too cold, and the ghosts of deer made for good eating. There was always a stone cabin at night, no matter how far she wandered, and she never ran out of arrows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Not tagged for major character death because everyone is already dead. Thanks to ADM for the beta.

She didn’t forget she was dead, but it started to seem unimportant after a while. The weather was kind, the sun never too hot nor the nights too cold, and the ghosts of deer made for good eating. There was always a stone cabin at night, no matter how far she wandered, and she never ran out of arrows.

Allison meets Kate, right as the loneliness is growing its own claws. The sun gets sharper, and Allison - she doesn’t step forward, doesn’t try to hug her. She’d loved Kate like a sister, and Kate was a monster. “You got to kill everyone, and you still died without having killed?”

“The oni -”

“Oh, sweetie, fireflies don’t count. You’re an Argent. Your mother would be so disappointed.”

She looks genuinely sad about it, and it rings of truth. Allison tries to stand straight. “I had a code.”

Kate’s grin is wicked. “Sweetie, you know better than that. The Code was never more than guidelines. Kill someone for me, kill them in the next month, and I’ll take you to see your mom.”

Kate disappears.

That night, there’s a moon.

Allison’s not surprised, not really: there hasn’t been a moon before, but now there is, and yet it doesn’t feel like a change. This whole place is little-better than dream logic. She’d always kind of thought dying would be more orderly. Either you’re good and go to Heaven or are very bad and go to Hell, and the system makes sense. This place, though, doesn’t feel like Heaven or Hell. It feels somewhere between life and lucid dreaming.

She curls up in her narrow bed and watches the moon outside her window. It’s new, just a thin bare crescent.

Is there any way she can do what Kate wants? She hasn’t seen anyone but Kate: no one who seems like they can’t protect themselves. She wants to stand by the new Code with almost religious fervor.

It occurs to her, as she watches the moon rise and fall, that if she’s here and Kate is here, there might be others. More than the deer she’s hunted, more than the fish in the stream. If Ennis is here, if whatever twisted portion of Peter that stayed dead - she could kill those. She could kill them and feel nothing but satisfied.

But still - she doesn’t want - she’s not compliant anymore.

She wakes late in the morning, and sets traps around her little cabin. They’ll keep out - they’ll keep things out. There are berries on the bushes, spring buds on the trees, and she finds a lake early in her walk that’s just the right temperature to swim in. Allison swims until her limbs are noodles, then dries in the not-sun, just lying still on the grass.

There’s a rabbit in her trap, cut nearly in half. She finds herself crying as she releases it, because she hadn’t even thought what size of animal she was setting a trap for, and these are all enough to kill a bear.

She wraps herself up in her narrow bed and tries not to think about how desperately she doesn’t want to be alone.

The morning sun is fierce, and by its leaf-filtered light Allison starts to look for evidence of other humans, evidence of wolves. There’s no harm - it’s not like she has anything else to do. She’s dead.

She finds nothing concrete, nothing she can be sure wasn’t her in her wanderings. It hits her like a blow how very alone she is, out here in this nothing-land that’s nothing like any afterlife she ever dreamed. She holds her bow loose in her hand and breathes very evenly so that she doesn’t cry with the force of it. She is not built to be alone.

When she decides to go home, she finds her cabin in the next clearing, and a hulking figure near the treeline, features obscured by the waning backlight. She makes her way around the outside of the clearing, obscured by the shape of the trees, until the figure’s no longer backlit. Boyd.

He looks almost nonchalant with his leg in a trap. His face is stoic, his posture solid as blood soaks the earth.

Allison flies to him, heart in her mouth. The trap doesn’t even have a lever to make it spring open until she gropes around for one, and Boyd’s eyes stay a steady yellow the whole time. “I’m sorry.”

“How’d you die?”

“There was - after. Um. Do you want to come inside? It was - a while.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, and she remembers the last time he was in her home. She looks down, to where she can see his flesh healing through the holes in his pants. “There’s no electricity,” she says quietly. “But I’ve got some food, water.”

“Fine,” he says.

He sits in her one chair and she gives him berries, dried venison, and stands by the fireplace, arms wrapped around her ribs. “Scott’s a true alpha - some legendary thing where he’s an alpha now and still hasn’t killed anyone. Ms. Blake was the darach, and Scott and Derek tricked her into using all her power to take down but not kill Deucalion. She’s dead, Kali’s dead, Aiden’s dead, Ethan’s in Scott’s pack. Cora got poisoned by mistletoe and Derek gave up his alpha status to save her.”

“Is he Scott’s beta now?”

“I think so,” she says, then has to look away, because it’s not - not quite true. “I’m not sure. He might be an omega, or just a pack of betas with Peter. I didn’t ask Scott. Things have been - um. At the end, with Ms. Blake, Scott, Stiles and I had to die, a little bit. That’s not how - we came back. But we weren’t dealing with it well. Actually, Scott and I weren’t dealing with it well. Stiles was mostly just possessed by an evil fox spirit.”

Boyd raises both eyebrows at that. “How could anyone tell?”

“Oh, murders,” Allison says as casually as she knows how. She hasn’t played the off-hand nonchalance game since - since. Lydia liked it.

Boyd nods slowly, and pops the last berry in his mouth.

Allison takes it as encouragement. “Lydia’s a banshee, by the way, and can tell when people are about to die, so we got some forewarning, sometimes. Coach Finstock got shot with an arrow, the Sheriff’s department got blown up, and Scott and Stiles found a werecoyote who’s apparently Peter’s daughter. Her name’s Malia.”

“How long after me did you die? You don’t look that much older.”

“A month, I think. That’s why I didn’t exactly get time to ask Derek whether he was joining Scott’s pack. Oh, and Scott’s new girlfriend is a kitsune, and her mom had demons she summoned to try and fight what was possessing Stiles. One of them stabbed me. I think the rest of them figured out how to take them out, though. Kate’s - not as dead as she could be, too.”

Boyd snorts, a bitter sound. “Only the good guys stay dead.”

“Yeah?” It comes out softer than she means it to. They’re being casual, dammit. But it means something, means a lot, actually, that he doesn’t think she’s one of the bad guys anymore. He’d be justified.

He looks at her, and his eyes soften infinitessimally. “Yeah.”

“I only have one bed,” she says. “But you could stay.”

He hesitates. “Okay.”

Everything’s too serious, suddenly. “I mean, it’s not like I can kill you, right?”

He laughs outright at that, the first time she’s heard it. “Yeah. It’s not awful, seeing someone I know.”

Allison knows he and Erica were close, and not just because she caught them together: Stiles was very pointed in his remarks about what he called her ‘villain arc.’ She turns away, towards the fireplace. There’s nothing in the hearth but ashes. It’s not cold enough at night to need it, especially not when her tinder always catches on the first try if she needs to cook.

Boyd stays, and they lay next to each other in her narrow bed, not touching. It’s more awkward than she’d expected. He lays very still on his back, and she lays on her side facing the door, one hand on the ring dagger under her pillow.

She doesn’t think either of them sleep much, but it’s still better than being alone. The morning light is harsh, and there are birds.

She wonders, not for the first time, how she ended up here, whether it’s some Hunter’s afterlife or an awful hallucination spanning her last breath. The moon’s still hanging in the sky, washed out against the blue. She’ll go foraging today: all of the plants she’s encountered are ones she recognizes from camping with her dad, and she knows she can eat most of them. She tells herself that not wanting to kill anything is more to do with having a decent stock of venison than with seeing the blood run down Boyd’s leg. She’s not weak for eating a balanced diet.

Boyd doesn’t follow her. She sees no trace of him when she ends up at the cabin again because she’s hungry around midday. He melts out of the lengthening shadows of dusk, and she stills. A werewolf and a hunter in the forest in the dark - it’s a lot like. No. He’s brought fish, in a half-assed basket of willow switches.

“I have no idea how to season this.”

She takes the claim for what it is, and invites him in. There’s tarragon and chervil, even though she’d never seen them in California. It’s better, not being alone.

She stills and looks down at her fork still spearing the fish. She so badly wants not to be alone in this place. “I’m worried about them back home.”

Boyd’s quiet. Eventually, he says. “My dad’s gone a lot for business and my granny lives in New Orleans. My mom and - we weren’t a real pack. I didn’t have a lot of people.”

“Think that’s why we’re here instead of somewhere better?” The question slips out without her permission: she understands, painfully, not having many people left, and the remaining being under constant threat.

“I think if any of the rules carried through - never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

She looks at him, and knows what he meant: he thinks she’s that much worse than him for her sins. Her hands shake. She died saving people. She saved Lydia, might have saved the town by giving them the way to kill the Oni. She tried and tried and tried to make up for what she’d done. “Kate promised,” she says with vicious deliberation, “that if I killed a werewolf here, I could be with my family.”

Boyd looks down at the fish and his eyes flash: he hadn’t recognized the herbs she’d used.

The air stiffens and crackles. Boyd’s eyes fade deliberately brown.

“I was going to find someone bad.” She looks out at the woods, and knows it’s feeble justification. “Ennis should be here. Maybe Peter, too - I have no idea how ressurection works.”

Boyd huffs a breath out through his nose and stabs the fish some more, then takes a big bite. He chews, swallows, and says, “The stupidest thing about this is that I’d still have taken the bite.”

Allison smiles wryly. “I get that.”

They clean up, and no one says anyone else belongs in Hell or does any violence. Boyd hesitates in the doorway in the light of the moon.

“Don’t be dumb,” Allison says, and gestures at the bed.

When she wakes at dawn, his arm’s around her waist, and neither of her hands is on a weapon. She unlaces her fingers from Boyd’s and goes to pee and tries to navigate the minefield of her heart.

The moon waxes, and Boyd stays with her. There’s not a lot to do. Food is easily acquired, and neither of them know if they really need to eat. They don’t - talking isn’t either of their strength.

Allison looks out at the waxing gibbous moon and breaks their unspoken rule of not talking in bed. “Have you looked for Erica?”

Even though they’re not touching, Boyd’s roil of emotion is palpable. “I hope she’s not here,” he says quietly, after a while.

She re-settles herself on the bed and ends up pressed to his side. She knows touch is a comfort. They’re friends enough that she can offer it, even if she still has to pretend not to. His hand comes up to cover her arm, and the temperature difference is soothing. One of her last muzzy waking thoughts is of ghost birth control.

When the moon is full, he’s careful with her, almost achingly so. She thinks he spends most of the day running - he comes back slightly damp and smelling of the river and moonlight. He doesn’t touch her, and keeps his glowing eyes turned to the wall.

Allison watches him not-sleep. The night lasts a long time.

In the morning, Allison says, “We should get another deer today. My clothes haven’t started showing any wear, but I want to try leather-making anyway.”

“That’s a long-term project,” Boyd says, voice rough with morning.

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Allison says, and Boyd smiles at her.

Their routine settles.

The moon wanes, and Allison is periodically anxious about the impending conversation she’ll have to have with Kate. But she - okay, she’s still aware that she’s dead, but the dream logic of this place is malleable, and she learns to dream better. Bigger. The deer hide tans in three days, perfect on the first try. She and Boyd don’t talk about it, not really. They don’t talk about much. Allison thinks eventually she might want to talk more, but in the meantime it’s nice to be able to spread out in silence.

As the moon wanes to a sliver, Allison breaks the rule against talking in bed once again. Some things are easier, in the dark. “I don’t want to deal with Kate. My fight - like, I’m still mad that I’m dead, I could’ve lived to be like 80 and been awesome - but my fight was over. The afterlife is supposed to be some kind of break, isn’t it?”

“Probably not,” Boyd says bluntly, but he runs a hand comfortingly down her side.

She lets the silence stretch, and weighs her words. “Do you think we can shape the forest enough to keep her out?”

His hand flexes on her hip, and his voice is steel. “We’ll find a way.”

The day after the new moon, Allison wakes knowing she has to find Kate. She straps on her quiver and her knives and her ring dagger while Boyd watches. He has no preparations to make, as every finger is a weapon. It probably won’t come to that - rationally it shouldn’t, because Kate is family and they’re just going to talk. But, well, they’re probably both half-anticipating everything going bloodily wrong.

She looks at him, and he stands. He runs his fingers through her hair, getting a strand out from under the strap of her quiver. He’s a lot taller than her, and even in her boots she has to look up to meet his eyes. He runs his fingers through her hair again, this time with more measured intent, and ends up cupping the side of her skull in his hand. Allison leans up and kisses him.

They go out searching, and it’s a factor of the realm that Allison finds the right clearing in twenty minutes.

Kate shows up shortly after that, all tight jeans and smug smile. “There’s my favorite niece. Where’s your trophy?”

“I didn’t get one. I’m not killing anyone for your worthless approval.”

Kate’s lips thin.

Allison straightens her shoulders, and stands square against the heat of Kate’s disapproval. “Murder without forethought is what brought us all here. Nous protegeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se proteger eux-memes is a better code, and I’m proud to have died by it. You barely followed a code at all, and the one you did follow was flawed.”

Kate bares her teeth, then, and they’re sharper than they’d been. “Killing monsters is the only code you should need. Hell, sweetie, I’m doing it from beyond the grave. I shot Derek just last week.”

Dark clouds fill the sky, and Allison knows they’re a manifestation of her and Boyd’s rage. “You’re the only monster I see here, Kate. And they’re going to make sure you die again out there, and I won’t mourn you in here. You’re not my aunt anymore. You’re nothing. And you’re not welcome.”

Allison throws out her will and her rage, and she has to assume that Boyd’s doing the same: Kate disappears. The clearing disappears, too, filled with birch trees shivering into life.

She doesn’t realize she’s shaking until Boyd emerges from the trees and takes her hand. She squeezes his hand and stares at what they’ve done, taking controlled breaths. When it’s not so much effort to keep her breathing steady, she sighs. “Let’s go home.”

 


End file.
